Decolonizing education: Re-schooling in India

Abstract

The industrialization and its consequential imperialism and colonialism have impacted this world for three centuries. India has been a colony of the British Empire for two centuries. These eventful two centuries of Indian history did see the influence of not only the political and economical might of the “great” Britain, but its influence on every milieu of Indian life. India’s indigenous education system was gradually displaced and the colonial model of education pervaded under the patronage from the colonial-state. The language, pedagogy, evaluation and knowledge of the colonizer became naturalis obligato for the population of the colony. India got independence in 1947 and took to the task of decolonizing education immediately. The attempts to decolonize education from various standpoints of political activism, universalism and religious nationalism are charted in this article. What decolonizing education should entail and how India has responded to this question in the last century and how the neo-liberal order has supported a particular ideology to have a dominant say in this process are concerns of this article. We analyse how re-schooling and indoctrination are projected as the most nationalist response for methodical decolonizing of education.